Poloniak’s latest Christmas display, rental committee findings and volunteer opportunities at the town council meeting

Warwick City Council’s December 30 meeting wrapped up 2022 by honoring holiday display king Vincent Poloniak, addressing short-term rental issues and raising awareness of the town’s friendly visitor scheme.

Town Supervisor Michael Sweeton opened the meeting by acknowledging Vincent Poloniak, a longtime resident widely known for his Christmas lights and many other contributions to the community.

“Many of you may know that when Vince worked in community development, he did a lot to improve the facilities for our farm workers in Orange County, and especially here in the town of Warwick. He served with the Florida Fire Department, Lions; he’s a veteran, a PLAV, and there’s not much in Warwick that Vince hasn’t touched,” Sweeton said.

“But one of the things I think we all know about is his beautiful Christmas light show, and for 50 years Vince has been religiously going out and creating this beautiful show in his home. And he’s shared it with our community for all these years, and it’s just an amazing thing.

Feeling that the work is “beyond him and his helpers,” Poloniak will retire his light display after 2022. In appreciation for his efforts, the council congratulated him and presented him with a plaque.

“I didn’t realize everyone would miss my lights so much, and I’m going to miss doing them.” Thank you very much,” Poloniak said. “I think that was my main purpose in doing them, to see the looks on the kids’ faces as they walked up and down that aisle.”

After Poloniak, the council brought in its Short-Term Rental Committee, a newly formed group that deals with short-term rental issues, such as landlords operating without a license or disrupting their neighborhoods.

“Our main goal, first and foremost, is to get the registered people over the unregistered people under control,” said committee member Lisa Mulcahy. “On our committee, we had a wealth of resources, primarily AirDNA, a paid analytics service that lets you see anything listed with Airbnb and Vrbo.”

Over the past two weeks, the group has been researching and collecting data on all registered and unregistered outbreaks in the area. At the meeting, they presented a map of their findings, showing that 16 rental homes in the city and 24 in Greenwood Lake were unregistered. Mulcahy proposed that the advice be directed to owners.

“Now that we have everyone who isn’t registered, you can submit the notifications. I expect after the notifications come out there will be a bit of people submitting,” Mulcahy said. “So , what we’d like to do at the committee level is bring together best practices, so that when these people come in, they’ll have some sort of help.”

She suggested the council hold information sessions to help rental property owners understand how to operate responsibly and create an online system for tenancy-related documents and complaints.

“What we would like to do at the community level is help Airbnb owners make sure they understand everything they need,” she added.

Friendly Visitor Program

Later in the meeting, Councilman Floyd DeAngelo announced that the Friendly Visitor Program, a local volunteer group that provides services to seniors and residents with disabilities, will host training sessions for those interested in joining. .

“For the friendly visitor program, they have volunteer training dates, Thursday 1/5 at 10 a.m. and 1/17 at 5:30 p.m. If you would like to volunteer, you can call 845-986-1124, ext 400 and leave a message,” DeAngelo said.

In addition, the town hall secretariats will distribute magnets with the coordinates of the program.

“So if you need a magnet, if you feel like you want a magnet, or if you know someone who should have a magnet, you can go to the clerk’s office,” DeAngelo said.